What Is The Point Of Making Wine Without Sugar?

Making wine without sugar is like making Kool-Aid without sugar. You’ll get a fruit tasting drink but it will taste like flavored water without any kick at all. That is not to say that making wine without sugar is like making Kool-Aid at all, but both drinks need sugar for taste but also for very different reasons. Let’s just say right off the bat that there is no making wine without sugar.

It just isn’t happening. This has nothing to do with any personal preference or any kind of secret family recipe, making wine without sugar is impossible because just like sugar gives Kool-Aid its sweetness, sugar also gives wine its fermentation. Any attempt at making wine without sugar is like trying to create a chemical reaction necessary to the making of wine without the main ingredient. It just cannot happen.

Sugar is the ingredient that reacts when you ferment wine to create alcohol. So making wine without sugar is simply making fruit juice. Grapes are the most well known fruit that wine is made from, so let’s just stick with that for this discussion. Grapes have a certain level of natural sugar in them that is normally not enough to ferment into alcohol alone. Wine makers all have their secrets, from what kind of yeast they use to how much sugar they add to get their alcohol content. You can find charts available that tell you how much sugar to add to get a certain alcohol content but many experienced wine makers prefer to use their own judgment based on age old family recipes and their own personal experience.

Just Like Beer

Traditionally wine has higher alcohol content than beer, but if you use too little sugar then you get a wine with about the same amount of alcohol as beer and that is wine with just no punch at all. But whenever you are adding or changing the amount of sugar in your fermenting wine it is always a good idea to keep an eye on how much alcohol content you will get from the sugar you have added to your mix. There are instruments you can use to check for alcohol content and you want to keep track of that, because too much alcohol content in your wine can be dangerous and potentially illegal. Always know what you are doing when you are making wine because not only is it something that could potentially be dangerous to drink if done incorrectly, but it takes months to make a batch of wine and if you make a mistake you will spend months regretting it.

So now we know that making wine without sugar just is not possible. Sugar is what gives the wine its alcohol content and wine isn’t wine without alcohol content. The amount of sugar in your fermenting wine will determine how much alcohol content you will have and it is very important that you keep a close eye on the potential alcohol content of your wine.

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